“Famous last words,” Pete said. “Lar, you catch her dropping off, pinch her.”
“Don’t you dare.” She tucked the robe in between the backs of her legs as if to prevent Larry from reaching up inside it for the pinch.
It was the sort of thing that Jean might do.
The casual warning and precaution hinted at an intimacy that was both comforting and exciting.
Larry used the remote to rewind the few seconds of the movie that he’d missed while complaining to Barbara.
She lasted more than five minutes. But not more than ten. Larry realized she was asleep when her legs straightened and one of her bare feet pushed against the side of his thigh. Her touch made warmth flow through him.
He waited for a while, enjoying the sensation. But it made him feel guilty. “Pete,” he finally said. “She’s zonked.”
“Barrr-bra.”
She flinched, lifted her face off the cushion. “No, I’m fine.”
“You dosed off.”
“No, I didn’t. I’m fine.” Her head settled down again. Her eyes drifted shut.
“Forget it,” Pete said. “She can watch it in the morning if she wants to.”
“I’m watching,” she mumbled.
Larry tried to watch the movie. Her right foot made it difficult. So did the way the top of her robe hung open, revealing most of her right breast through the flimsy pink nightgown. The show on the TV screen was good, but the stolen glimpses were better. Sometimes the foot rubbed him.
Near the end of the movie she stretched out her left leg. Its foot pushed across the top of his thigh and rested on his lap. The pressure there made him squirm. He wrapped his hand around Barbara’s ankle and guided her foot down beside the other.
“Huh?” she moaned. “Sorry. Kicking you?”
“It’s all right,” he said.
Pete looked around, frowning. “Christ, Barb, you’re screwing up the movie. Why don’t you just go to bed.”
“Yeah, maybe I better.”
Shit, Larry thought.
She pushed herself up and staggered to her feet. “Night, guys. Sorry I pooped out on you, Larry.”
“No problem. Thanks for the dinner and everything.”
“Glad you could make it. See ya.” She made her way around the coffee table. Larry could see through her robe when she stepped in front of him. Her breasts swayed a little as she bent over and kissed Pete good night.
Then she was gone.
The room seemed empty without her.
During the final moments of Cameron’s ClosetLarry heard a toilet flush.
Pete removed the tape from the VCR. He grinned over his shoulder. “Free at last, free at last,” he said. “Thank God Almighty, free at last.”
“If you want to turn in...”
“Are you kidding?” He pushed the tape of Floaterinto the machine and started it playing. “Back in a second.” He hurried away.
He came back while the screen still showed its warning against unauthorized use of the videotape. He had a bottle of Irish whiskey in one hand and two glasses in the other. He sat next to Larry on the sofa. He filled the two glasses. “Party time,” he said.
“I’m gonna be wasted tomorrow.”
“The cats are away. Gotta live it up.”
They watched the movie until their glasses were empty. Pete refilled them both, then pressed the Stop button on his remote. The horror film was replaced by a black and white John Wayne movie. Larry recognized it immediately as The Sands of Iwo Jima.
“Why’d you turn it off?” he asked.
A grin stretched the corners of Pete’s mouth.
Fourteen
“How about a little excursion?” Pete said.
“What do you mean?”
“Sagebrush Flat.”
“You’re kidding,” Larry said.
“Who’s gonna stop us?”
“I don’t want to go out there.”
Pete clapped a hand down on Larry’s knee. His eyes gleamed with mischief, but he wasn’t smiling. He looked like a kid, a kid with a mustache and some gray in his hair and with big plans to pull off a caper. “We take the van. We drive out there, pick up the jukebox, and we’ll be back in two, three hours. Barb’s zonked. She’ll never know.”
“She’ll know when she finds the thing in your garage.”
“Okay, so we’ll leave it over at your place. What do you say, Lar?”
“I think it’s crazy.”
“Hey, man, an adventure. It’ll be great. You can use it in your book. You know, tell all about how the two guys sneak off in the middle of the night to bring the thing back. You can write it the way it happens, you know? Won’t have to tax the ol‘ imagination.”
“It’s crazy.”
“Don’t you want the box?”
“Not that badly.”
“What about a photo for the cover of your book?”
“Well, that’d be neat, but...”
“So we’ll take my camera. Maybe we won’t bring the thing back, you know? Maybe we can’t even lift it. But at least we’ll have some pictures.”
“We could do that during the day.”
“You know the kind of heat I’d get from Barbara. She’d give me all kinds of shit. How about it?”
“You really want to go now?” The digital clock on the VCR showed 12:05.
“No time like the present. A midnight mission.”
The idea frightened Larry. It also excited him. He felt a vibration that seemed to hum through his nerves.
When was the last time, he wondered, that you did something really daring?
If you chicken out, you’ll regret it. And Pete’ll think you’re a pussy.
A real adventure.
“Just like Tom and Huck,” he said.
“Huh?”
“Tom Sawyer climbed out his window in the middle of the night and went with Huck to a graveyard to cure their warts. I always wished I could do something like that.”
“You got warts, man?”
“Let’s go for it.”
Grinning, Pete refilled the glasses. “Fun and games,” he toasted. They clinked their glasses and drank.
Pete took his glass with him. He turned on a lamp at the end of the sofa. Then he removed the tape from the VCR, flicked off the television and left the room. Larry sipped whiskey while he waited. It warmed him but didn’t ease the thrumming vibrations.
When Pete returned he wore a gunbelt. His .357 hung in the holster against his right leg. Dangling by a strap around his neck was a camera with a flash attachment. “I checked the bedroom,” he said in a low voice. “Barb’s out like a light.”
Pete set his empty glass down. He capped the whiskey bottle and handed it to Larry. “You be the keeper of the hooch.”
“We shouldn’t take it with us.”
“Fuck that. Who’s gonna know?”
“If we get stopped...”
“We won’t. Calm down, you’ll live longer.”
They went to the door. Pete turned off the lamp.
They stepped outside. Standing under the porch light, Pete locked the front door with his key.
Larry, shivering, hugged his chest as he hurried toward the van at the curb. A chilly wind pushed at him. He thought about stopping by his house for a jacket. But Pete wasn’t bundled up. Pete still wore his short-sleeved knit shirt and blue jeans.
If he can take it, I can, Larry told himself.
Besides, it’ll be all right once we’re in the van.
The van felt warm. It must’ve been like an oven before the sun went down, and it still retained a lot of heat. Larry settled into the passenger seat and sighed.
“Pass it over.”
He handed the bottle to Pete, who took a swig and gave it back. Larry took a drink. “Are you all right to drive?” he asked.
“You kidding? I don’t hardly even have a good buzz on.”
I do, Larry thought. I’m buzzing, all right. But it isn’t the booze. Just good old-fashioned ex
citement. And maybe fear.
Pete started the van. He kept the headlights off for a while. After turning the first corner, he put them on. They drilled into the night. “Hey, this is something, you know that?”
“You think you can find the town?”
“No sweat.”
“We stay away from the hotel, though, right?”
“If you say so.” Pete drove in silence for several minutes. They were on Riverfront Drive before he looked at Larry and said, “You know what I don’t understand? How come you want to write about the jukebox instead of the vampire?”
“Vampire books are a dime a dozen.”
“Not true ones. Don’t get me wrong, I think your jukebox story sounds pretty neat. But I’d think the true story of how you found a vampire in a ghost town would be... different, you know?”
“Different, all right.”
“Remember that movie, The Amityville Horror? That was supposed to be a true story.”
“It was supposed to be,” Larry said. “But I’ve heard the whole thing was made up.”
“Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. The thing, is, they claimedit was true. And that’s what made it. Would’ve been just another haunted house movie except for that. You’re supposed to think it actually happened, right?”
“Right.”
“It was based on a book, wasn’t it?”
“Yeah. And the book was pushed as nonfiction.”
“Did the book sell okay?”
“Are you kidding? It sold a ton.”
“So what’s to keep you from writing up this vampire thing as nonfiction? Have a big best-seller, they make a movie out of it, presto! You’re rich and famous.”
“Shit.”
“What do you mean, shit? You got something against money?”
“I’m doing okay.”
“Sure, you’re doing okay. But how many best-sellers have you had?”
“You can do just fine without ever having a book on the best-seller lists. Those guys on the lists, they’re making millions.”
Pete whistled softly. “That much?”
“Sure. Some of those guys get a million up front. Or more. That’s before paperback rights, foreign rights, movie sales.”
“Christ, and you’re not interested?”
“I didn’t say I’m not interested. I just don’t want to mess with any vampire.”
“Hey, let’s not kid ourselves here. The thing’s not a vampire. It’s just some broad with a stake in her chest. But we don’t knowthat. Not for sure. Neither will your readers. That’s what keeps the story going. Wait till the very end, then you pull the stake. That’s like the final chapter, you know? You pull the stake and see what happens.”
“I don’t know.”
They left the lights of Mulehead Bend behind. Pete turned off the main road and headed west into the desert. There were no more streetlamps. The headlights pushed paths of brightness up the lane in front of them. The moon cast a pale glow over the bleak landscape of boulders, scrub bushes, cacti, and the jagged mountains in the distance. It looked cold and forlorn out there. Larry suddenly wanted to turn back.
It was bad enough, driving through this bleak terrain on the way to a jukebox.
But that obviously wasn’t what Pete had in mind.
“What are we reallydoing?” Larry asked.
“Just what we planned. Bring the jukebox back. Or just take some pictures, if we can’t carry it.”
“Then what’s this vampire business?”
“Just a thought. Hey, you don’t like the idea, fine. I’m not trying to push you into something. But Jesus, why on earth would you want to pass up a chance to make a million bucks?”
“The thing scares me.”
“That’s the point.” He reached over, took the bottle from Larry, drank from it and handed it back. “The point is, you’re in the business of scaring people. Right?”
“Scaring them with fiction. Not the real thing. They want real scares, they can watch the TV news.”
“This wouldn’t be all that different from your novels. Hey, we are talking about vampires, not homicides or nuclear war. The only difference is, this would be a true story. And it’d fit right in with your image, you know? This is the sort of thing that’d make publicity people drool. Get this, ‘Renowned horror writer discovers vampire on weekend outing.’ It’s a natural. They’d put you on the tube, man. And here’s the best part, you could take her with you.”
“Oh, wonderful.”
“Just let ‘em tryto say you made the whole thing up.”
“Great. You’ve got me carting a corpse around on the talk-show circuit.”
“We’re talking about a million bucks, Lar. I’d sure do it.”
“Be my guest.”
“I can’t write for shit. And you’ve got...” His head snapped around. “I’ve gotit! I’ll be the main guy. You can be the guy who takes it all down.”
“Your Watson, your Boswell.”
“Yeah, whatever. God, I wish we had a recorder. We oughta have all this on tape for the book.”
“You’re really serious.”
“Damn straight. Can you remember all this? Hell, we should’ve laid off the booze.”
“Right.” Larry took another swallow of it.
“I see this as a major book and movie. It’s a natural.”
“It does have potential,” Larry admitted.
“Potential? It’ll be a blockbuster.”
“It’d need a story, though.”
“Hey, man, we’re living the story right now. You start it off with last Sunday when we found the thing. You write it just the way it happened. That’s a few chapters worth, right there. Then you’ve got tonight. And how we go off to get the jukebox, but I talk you into getting the vampire instead.”
“That’s maybe fifty pages,” Larry said. “Then what?”
“You just tell it like it happens. Describe us going into the hotel, taking out the corpse, putting it in the van and taking it home.”
“To whose house?”
“Have you got any good hiding places?”
“Nowhere that Jean wouldn’t find it. Besides, I don’t like keeping secrets from her.”
“How do you think she’d react?”
“To having a corpse in the house?”
“In the garage, say.”
“I don’t think she’d be delighted by the idea.”
“Barb would just shit.”
“So much for the blockbuster,” Larry said.
Pete went silent.
Thank God, Larry thought. Good thing we’re both married. That ought to nip the idea right in the bud.
He felt enormous relief. He took a drink of whiskey and sighed.
“I’ve got it!” Pete blurted. “That’s part of the story! We need stuff to happen after we get the thing, right? You can put all the stuff in there about Jean and Barbara giving us grief about the thing. But we talk them into letting us keep it.”
“Now you’re talking fiction.”
“We just explain to them, you know? It’s not like we’ll be keeping the thing forever. Just a couple of months, maybe, while you’re working on the book. With a big jackpot at the end. I think the gals might go for it.”
“Where’s the big jackpot for Barbara?”
“I’m getting a cut, right?”
“Yeah, I may cut your throat. Then I can do a book on that while I’m in prison.”
“What do you say, twenty percent? My idea, after all. You wouldn’t do it at all if it weren’t for me.”
“True enough. Not that I’m planning to do it at all, regardless. The whole thing’s crazy.”
“That’s what makes it so great. It’s crazy. It’s wild! You think Stephen King would pass up a chance like this? Hell, he’d probably do it for the fun of it.”
“Why don’t you give hima try? I’ve got his address.”
“ ‘Cause you’re my pal. I don’t want to take this away from you. This is your big chance.”
“Thanks.”
“So, what do you say? Are you in?”
If you tell him no, Larry thought, he’ll never forgive you. He’s probably already calculated twenty percent of a million bucks. It’d be like robbing him. No more outings with him and Barbara, no more drinks and dinner with them. The end of all that.
He thought about the fun they’d had during the past year.
He thought about Barbara stretched out on the sofa, and the way she had tucked the back of her robe between her legs.
Wouldn’t necessarily end the friendship, he told himself. But it would sure put a strain on it.
And Pete was right about the book. It could be big. It could be another Amityville Horror.
Doing it would mean spending a lot more time with Pete, too. With Pete and Barbara.
It would also mean bringing the corpse into your life.
Probably not so bad, once you got used to it.
“I think we’ll have real trouble with the wives,” he said.
“Nothing we can’t handle. What do you say, man?”
“I guess we could rent a room for it, or something, if they won’t let us keep it around.”
“Sure. We’ll figure something out. Are you in?”
“Maybe.”
“Ah-ha!”
“Let’s just play it by ear, okay? We’ll have a look at the thing. But I still want to do the jukebox book, so let’s take care of that first, and see how it goes.”
“Oh, man. Hey, this is the start of something big.”
“We ought to have our heads examined.”
Fifteen
When the reaching headlights found Babe’s Garage at the east end of Sagebrush Flat, Pete killed the beams and eased off the gas pedal.
They entered the town, moving slowly.
Larry studied the moonlit street ahead of them. He felt trapped by their crazy plan, but he held on to a hope that something might intercede to stop it. They needed privacy. If a car were here... if light came from a doorway or window...
But the street looked abandoned. The buildings were dark.
The van rolled to a halt in front of the Sagebrush Flat Hotel. Leaning forward, Pete peered past Larry.
They both stared toward the doors. But the hotel blocked the moonlight, throwing a black shroud of shadow all the way to the sidewalk. The blackness looked solid.
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